Literature & Ideas
Landmark
Ebrahim Hussein
born 1943
Wrote Kinjeketile, the play that made Swahili a language of modern theatre
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Tanzania Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
His 1969 play Kinjeketile, about the prophet of the Maji Maji rebellion, is the founding work of modern Swahili drama and is still taught and staged across East Africa.
Ebrahim Hussein is a Tanzanian playwright and poet, the first to write serious modern drama in Swahili rather than in English.
Kinjeketile, published in 1969, takes the spirit medium whose water medicine launched the Maji Maji rebellion against German rule and makes of him a study in how a people talk themselves into a war they cannot win and are right to fight anyway. It is the founding text of Swahili theatre, set on school and university syllabuses across East Africa, and it established that a Tanzanian audience could be given tragedy in its own language. Mashetani and Arusi followed.
Kinjeketile, published in 1969, takes the spirit medium whose water medicine launched the Maji Maji rebellion against German rule and makes of him a study in how a people talk themselves into a war they cannot win and are right to fight anyway. It is the founding text of Swahili theatre, set on school and university syllabuses across East Africa, and it established that a Tanzanian audience could be given tragedy in its own language. Mashetani and Arusi followed.
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